#grammarsexual

[hoidn]

Dillon: Iara and me, we're gonna— Niko: “I.” Dillon: What? Niko: "Iara and I."  Dillon:  Niko: Never mind.

JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I COULD NOT LOVE HER MORE

[hoidn]

people. people. for the love of all that's good in the world, please learn how to use the interrobang correctly. please. i know you can't work commas or apostrophes or, god forbid, semicolons, but the interrobang is within your grasp! it's a star you can reach if you just put a tiny amount of thought into it. i promise!

you use an interrobang to add emphasis to your question. "what?" becomes "what?!" as in, "i am exclaiming this question because i am so startled or amazed or horrified or feeling some other strong emotion!"

writing "what!?" adds confusion to your exclamation and to your reader. "i'm excited! maybe?" is that really what you want your character to say? because the number of times a day i encounter a mangled interrobang indicates a truly worrisome epidemic of people who apparently have no real grasp on their own emotions.

"how dare you!?" you yell in outrage. except... it might not be outrage? you've come to the end of the sentence and now you're not sure. once, you were, you think, back at the beginning, but not anymore. the question mark hangs at the end of all your sentences, undermining every exclamation you make. the uncertainty is becoming unbearable but there's no way back. you're trapped here in this hell of doubt. what's real? what's true? is anything? how will you ever know?!

this, friends, is what you do to your reader every time you mutilate an interrobang.

so, to sum up:

?! = yes. good. !? = no. bad. why would you do that?

seriously, i am asking for so little here. my standards have fallen so low. the correct placement of two elements. just two. that's all. two. two.

[hoidn]

ziparumpazoo replied to your post: people. people. for the love of all that’s good in...

1. i am now doubting every time i have used this and whether i have used it correctly

you know me well enough to know that i would have told you had i witnessed something so egregious. ;)

2. maybe i was less surprised by the time i got to the end of the sentence!? maybe?

so you only needed, like, half a question mark? perhaps a question mark set at 50% opacity?

3. ‘interobang’ sounds like some sort of interrogation kink tag on ao3 and i love the name

alas, something fandom cannot take credit for. on ye olde typewriters, the key looked like this: ‽. isn’t that cool‽ (see what i did there?) the name of the thing comes from the 1960s: blend of interrogative or interrogation point and bang1 (sense 4 of the noun), which is the character ‘!’ (from Computing, chiefly North American).

and now, some bonus etymology! (don't act like you didn't know it was coming.) interrogative, of course, comes from the same root as interrogate, which dates back to the late 15th century: from Latin interrogat- ‘questioned’, from the verb interrogare, from inter- ‘between’ + rogare ‘ask’. so literally ‘between ask’ or ‘ask between’ since latin is more fluid than english in its word order. cf the original line from virgil, which is ‘omnia vincit amor,’ more commonly known in modern standard as ‘amor vincit omnia’. means the same thing in latin, but translated literally in english they mean the opposite.

i don't know if this is true or not because i've never investigated it (i adore the idea too much to care about its veracity), but i've heard that victor hugo sent his publisher the manuscript for 'les miserables' with a note that simply read: '?'. and his publisher replied with: '!'. and that's how the interrobang was born.

[hoidn]

Grammar is a system of language involving syntax and semantics. Also sexy.

Amy Santiago, Brooklyn Nine-Nine 3x07

[hoidn]

When it was time to write, and he took his pen in his hand, he never thought of consequences; he thought of style. I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.

– Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

[hoidn]

when someone knows you really well

two things happened in quick succession this morning. mr tree came in and i pointed at a post of his on tumblr and said, "you forgot an apostrophe". then he took my empty glass out to the kitchen. him: (coming back into the room) if you refresh it, the apostrophe is there now. me: did you take my glass? him: i was going to fill it up with water but i thought the apostrophe was more important.